Caribbean Meridians Conference
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CARIBBEAN MERIDIANS * CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS (A-Z BY SURNAME) Camille Alexander ‘No Lines of Demarcation: Caribbean and American Literary Representations of Child Sexual Assault’ The term ‘meridian’, when discussing the Caribbean, poses a debate between perception and reality. The Caribbean is perceived as an earthly paradise by northern visitors, where they can enjoy sun, sand, sea, and sex without consequences. However, global north assumptions about the global south often ignore the reality of social issues impacting both regions; one of the most pressing is child sexual assault (CSA). This paper seeks to draw a connection between global north and south, specifically the US and Caribbean, through an examination of literature addressing CSA. Using Stacey-Ann Chin’s The True History of Paradise, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Amanda Smyth’s Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, this paper attempts to unravel the limited perception of global south as paradise and, therefore, impervious to CSA. In addition, this paper hopes to place more emphasis on female victims, who, when children of color, are often cast as the initiators and/or perpetrators of their own sexual violations rather than as the victims of sexual predators. Finally, this paper strives to situate the global south in a discussion of resolution through acknowledging that CSA occurs in both regions; engaging in an open dialogue; and decriminalizing the process of victims seeking justice while moving the legal system towards holding perpetrators accountable. Camille S. Alexander completed a PhD at the University of Kent, Canterbury and is an assistant professor of English at the United Arab Emirates University. [email protected] Bénédicte André and Srilata Ravi ‘Multiple Temporalities and Cultural Translation in Yanick Lahens’s La Folie était venue avec la pluie Looking at Yanick Lahens’s 2006 short-story, La Folie était venue avec la pluie, this paper seeks to introduce the notion of transreading, or reading as a form of translation between temporalities within and between texts. Quoting French poet René Char in a 2001 interview, Yanick Lahens raises the sense of a temporal distance experienced by Haitian writers “in a hurry to write, as if [they] were lagging behind […] inexpressible life” (Char, 1936). Lahens contents that in Haiti where, more than anywhere else, it feels like everything is being simultaneously built and unbuilt (construit et défait), the short story as a genre can offer another way of grasping and making sense of the particularity of this temporality. Bénédicte André is a Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia). Her research interests lie in the literary and cultural productions of French- speaking islands, in particular those of Reunion, New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Her recent publications include Iléité. Perspective littéraires sur le vécu insulaire (Pétra, 2016); “Island * Where papers are co-presented the presenters are listed together under the surname which comes earliest in the alphabet. 1 Literature and the Literary Gaze” (Routledge, 2018); “‘Il y a toujours l’Autre’. Towards a Photomosaic Reading of Otherness in Island Short Story Collections” (AJFS, 2018). [email protected] Srilata Ravi is Professor of French and Francophone Literature at the Faculté Saint-Jean of the University of Alberta. She taught at the University of Western Australia (2004-2010) and the National University of Singapore (1994-2003) before joining the University of Alberta in 2010. Her research interests are in Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Diaspora Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. Her recent publications include Translating the Postcolonial in Multilingual Contexts (with Judith Misrahi-Barak, 2017); Sports, modernité et réseaux impériaux: Napoléon Lajoie, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, baseball et cricket au tournant du XXe siècle (with Claude Couture, 2017); Rethinking Global Mauritius: Critical Essays on Mauritian Literatures and Cultures (2013); Ecritures mauriciennes au féminin : penser l'altérité (with Véronique Bragard 2011). [email protected] Nancy Bird-Soto ‘Luisa Capetillo and the Coordinates for a Global Feminism’ Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922) is a Puerto Rican writer-activist from the early twentieth century, considered by her primary biographer, Norma Valle, to be a pioneer Puerto Rican feminist. Her varied influences, ranging from anarchism to Spiritism, make her a figure that navigated the realities of proscription, without wavering in her commitment to women’s and workers’ rights. In the last three decades, Capetillo has been analyzed through several lenses. These are, mainly: Puerto Rican feminism, Latina working-class activism in the United States, sociocultural relegation, and the anecdotal significance of her being the first woman to wear pants in public in Puerto Rico. Drawing from this trajectory, my presentation considers Capetillo as both proponent and embodiment of a brand of global feminism in which the local and the global find balance and its enactment through the words and actions of the activist. Thus, Capetillo emerges as a Caribbean subject – as Lara Walker notes – with a transnational vision. For Valle, Capetillo’s work is internationalist while bound to an essential Puerto Ricaneess. My analysis explores the coordinates of Capetillo’s global feminism as a transnational and label-defying subject, i.e. as a Caribbean agent. I incorporate the work of Valle, Walker, Lisa Sánchez-González, among other critics. Nancy Bird-Soto is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her book, Dissident Spirits: The Post-Insular Imprint in Puerto Rican/Diasporic Literature, is a forthcoming title in the Peter Lang Humanities Series. [email protected] Patrick Brennan ‘Carnival and Performance Art in the novels of Earl Lovelace’ Caribbean art forms including Carnival, Calypso and dance feature as recurring themes throughout Earl Lovelace’s novels, where they are presented for their historic and contemporary socio-political significance. They are identified within this presentation as representing foundational elements, for what Lovelace describes as, “the soul of a new Trinidadian aesthetic”. Beginning with the enslaved African’s appropriation of Carnival from its French origins in the early 18th century, through to its centrality as a “meeting place for racial reconciliation and cultural creativity”, Carnival and associated art forms have assumed an enhanced sociological value with Lovelace, as he came to believe in their potential to offer the base on which an authentic Caribbean history could be 2 established. While Carnival had traditionally exemplified a mode of political resistance for the Afro- Trinidadian community, its contemporary engagement with the disparate ethnic and racial groups provides the basis for employing nation-building practices. Lovelace promotes Carnival’s ability to articulate the psychic emotions of all the participants, allowing for a common purpose in constructing a sense of unity and oneness in building a popular socially cohesive culture, where all Trinidadians “may confidently engage with modernity”. Patrick Brennan University of Wollongong. Ph.D. candidate. Proposed dissertation focusing on the Trinidadian Theatre Workshop. [email protected] Soizic Brohan ‘Pathways to Political Assemblies for Caribbean Women: A Comparative Study between Guadeloupe and Jamaica’ While the abolition of slavery in Guadeloupe and Jamaica compelled the French and British colonial oligarchies respectively to abandon their political hegemony in these territories, women remained disenfranchised until 1944. Having been largely underrepresented in political assemblies throughout the 20th century, women have recently become better represented in these democracies. This is due to the implementation of political parity in Guadeloupe and strong advocacy for gender quotas in Jamaica. This presentation focuses on the political trajectories of women elected to office in these territories and how their existing social capital has enabled them to access political assemblies. The intended analysis uses a diversified approach, both quantitative: through the construction of a database of female politicians; and qualitative: through biographic research interviews conducted with a number of them. Drawing from data collected from research field trips to Guadeloupe in 2015 and Jamaica in 2016, four distinct pathways emerge for women entering political life which are shared by both territories. These women can be described as: “heirs” to past politicians; “activists” in the political and social spheres; “technocrats” who convert professional competencies to political capital; and “free spirits” who already have a public identity before seeking office. Soizic Brohan, PhD candidate in Political Science, Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), Sciences Po Bordeaux, founding member and secretary of the Association Francophone des Études Caribéennes. [email protected] Jarrett H. Brown ‘Mama’s Man and the Matrix of Masculinity in Two of Louise Bennett’s Poems’ Several of Louise Bennett-Coverley’s poems employ the mother in a variety of ways, to influence the regime of masculinity as well as its virile statements about the power and role of men in communities. In these instances, Miss Lou feminizes masculinity by dramatizing the performance of her male characters around the dominant, authoritative and virile figure of